Cockatiels at Seven

by Donna Andrews

  Always a bad sign when Rob started neglecting his friends. It usually pointed to a new girlfriend or a new hobby, and Rob’s taste in both was highly dubious.

  “Maybe I should call the police,” I said.

  “Chief Burke would love that,” Michael said. “A missing toddler, with the town in the middle of what amounts to a crime wave by Caerphilly’s standards.”

  “This missing toddler could be related to the crime wave,” I reminded him.

  Though when I called, I couldn’t reach Chief Burke. Debbie Anne, the dispatcher, promised to tell all the patrol cars to keep an eye out for my Toyota and to tell Chief Burke as soon as she could reach him, but the minutes ticked into hours without a call back. And without a sign of Rob.

  At about eleven-thirty, we finally heard a car pull into the driveway. I ran out to see Rob stepping out of my car.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I asked.

  Apparently Rob wasn’t expecting to find anyone up. He leaped into the air with surprise.

  “Sssh,” he stage-whispered. “Timmy’s asleep in the back seat.”

  I peered into the back seat of the Toyota. Timmy looked unharmed. He was clutching Kiki in one hand and Blanky in the other and had his head tilted in one of those impossible angles that would give an adult a sore neck for days but never seemed to bother little children.

  “He’s fine,” Rob whispered.

  “He’d better be,” I said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Just after you left, I got a call from a friend who was flying into Dulles and needed a ride back here,” he said.

  “You took Timmy with you to Dulles? It’s a four-hour round trip.”

  “I didn’t figure it would be a problem—he’s in his car seat and everything. He slept most of the way back, actually. You should probably just let him sleep.”

  “We can’t leave him out here in the car all night,” I said.

  “I’ll carry the car seat in,” Michael offered. “Maybe we can ease him gently into the crib without waking him up.”

  It almost worked. It would have worked, if Rob hadn’t knocked over the trash can just as we were all tiptoeing out of the room.

  Twenty

  Michael and I were basking on the beach, drinking fruity drinks with parasols stuck in them. The waiter came around and leaned over—I assumed he was going to ask if I wanted a refill. I smiled, and held up my nearly empty glass. The waiter reached out and said,

  “KIKI!”

  I’m not sure whether I fell out of bed or rolled out, but I found myself on the floor, ears ringing, while up on the bed Timmy continued to bellow “Kiki! Want Kiki! Where Kiki?” at the top of his lungs. Michael, who had apparently abandoned ship on the other side of the bed, growled something and strode out of the room.

  I knew I should get up and try to comfort Timmy, but I was still gathering my wits when Michael returned.

  “Here’s Kiki,” he said. “You left him in your crib. Now go back to sleep.”

  He sounded a little cranky. I didn’t blame him. I was very cranky.

  “Meg? Are you all right?”

  Michael was peering over the side of the bed.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just waiting for the homicidal urge to pass.”

  “Kiki hungry,” Timmy said, in a conversational tone.

  “I’ll go start breakfast,” Michael said.

  “It’s not even light yet,” I said.

  “Kiki hungry,” Michael said. “Come on, Timmy. Let’s let Auntie Meg sleep a little longer.”

  I tried, but the spell was broken. I tossed and turned until I finally realized sleep wasn’t happening. So I got up and went over to the window to see what kind of a day it was going to be.

  Seth Early was sprawled on the ground behind his hedge, fast asleep, and from the look of it, probably snoring sonorously.

  Rob’s Porsche was still parked in the driveway, which was not surprising. Doubtless he’d considered that his baby-sitting services had earned him room and board for the night. Perhaps I could browbeat him into helping with Timmy again today, in return for the scare he’d given us last night.

  The thermometer we’d hung outside our bedroom window already showed seventy degrees, and it wasn’t even light yet. Not a good sign.

  Down in the backyard, Rose Noire was bottle-feeding something small, cute, and furry that would probably break her vegetarian heart by growing up to be a carnivore. I spotted Dad and Dr. Blake doing something near one of the sheds. Between the snakes in the basement, the birds on the third floor, and now the furry thing in the backyard, the place was starting to look like a zoo again.

  I showered—not that the heat wouldn’t undo that the second I walked outdoors—dressed and stumbled downstairs. Michael had fixed his fruit-and-cinnamon-laden oatmeal again, and was feeding it to Timmy and Rob. Better yet, he waited to offer me some until after I’d finished the cup of coffee he’d made me.

  “I’m not due at today’s meetings until nine,” he said. “So I’ll keep Timmy out of your hair till I have to leave.”

  I smiled my thanks. Yes, Michael was trying. If he hadn’t been in the middle of what we privately called Hell Week, with the back-to-back meetings and training sessions the administration thought necessary to prepare the faculty for the new year, he’d probably do more than his share of Timmy-sitting. He’d be a great father—patient, caring, fully involved. Why was I in such a panic about the idea of having kids?

  The responsibility, I decided. Even when someone else was temporarily taking care of Timmy, he was always in the back of my mind. Did it get easier if the kids arrived as helpless infants and gradually grew more mobile? Did you gradually stop worrying that every time you turned your back, your child would do something that could get him killed? Or at least get used to the worrying?

  Of course, it was hard to tell how much of my anxiety came from having Timmy around and how much from not knowing when—or if—Karen would come back to claim him.

  “Oh, I meant to tell you that I started asking around yesterday about babysitters,” Michael said. “It’s tough this time of year—it’d be much easier if the students were back. But I’m sure we can find someone. Or at least a mother’s helper—someone to keep Timmy out from underfoot while you get some work done.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “Of course, I hope by the time you find someone, we don’t need a baby-sitter, but . . . ”

  He nodded.

  I turned my attention to Rob.

  “So, let me tell you what we’re doing today,” I said.

  “We?” Rob mumbled, through a mouthful of oatmeal.

  “The sooner I find Karen or figure out what she’s up to, the sooner we can get a certain someone safely back into her hands,” I said, nodded toward where Timmy was picking the raisins out of his oatmeal and arranging them in decorative patterns.

  “So you’re going to be out snooping today.”

  “Snooping is very difficult with a toddler in tow,” I said. “Especially for a person whose nerves were shattered for several hours last night by the inexplicable disappearance of said toddler.”

  “I already explained—”

  “So you have your choice,” I went on. “You can stay here and take care of Timmy, or you can ride shotgun with me and lend a hand with Timmy as needed.”

  “I’m not doing diapers,” he said.

  “No problem,” I said. “But if that’s the case, you’d better come along with me.”

  “We both appreciate how much you’re helping,” Michael said, as he hoisted Timmy onto his shoulders. “Come on, Timmy. Let’s see what kind of animals Dr. Blake has brought this morning.”

  He sailed out into the yard with Timmy giggling happily.

  “I’ll be in the yard when you’re ready to leave,” Rob said, and followed them out.

  From the relatively easy time I had talking Rob into accompanying me, I suspected someone else was expecting him to be someplace doing something more c
hallenging, and I’d end up being the fall guy for whatever went wrong. But at the moment, I didn’t much care.

  When I turned on my car’s CD player, planning to treat Timmy to more of his favorite car music, I was nearly jolted out of my seat by a high-decibel blast of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.”

  “Dammit,” I said, punching the off button. “What was that?”

  “Led Zeppelin’s second album,” Rob said, unnecessarily.

  “Yes, but what is it doing in my car? Were you playing Led Zeppelin to Timmy? And at that volume?”

  “I tried him with Death Cab for Cutie, but I guess the kid’s a classic rock fan,” Rob said.

  Translation: Rob was currently infatuated with playing albums older than he was, so anyone in his vicinity had better get used to it.

  After mature consideration, I decided almost anything would be less annoying than Barney the dinosaur and “It’s a Small World,” so I agreed to play Led Zeppelin during our ride—though at considerably lower volume than seemed reasonable to the boys in the backseat.

  “It’s not rock if you can’t feel the bass,” Rob complained.

  “Youder,” Timmy suggested.

  I ignored both of them, and they finally gave up and settled down to listen to Robert Plant’s wails at the very modest decibel level that seemed safe for a toddler’s hearing.

  “So where are we going?” Rob asked.

  “Back to where Jasper Walker’s been staying,” I said. “With you along to watch Timmy, I might have more chance of learning something.”

  “Are you going to burgle the place?” Rob demanded. “Cool! I charge extra for aiding and abetting felonies.”

  But as we made our way farther and farther away from town, I noticed that he seemed increasingly uneasy.

  “Where are we going?” he finally asked, as we turned off the road and onto the dirt lane.

  “Hiram Bass’s house,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s where Jasper Walker has been staying.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Rob was waving a toy at Timmy, but he seemed distracted, looking around as if something made him very nervous. Maybe it was the effect of being in the woods—Rob was never much for roughing it.

  He seemed to perk up a bit by the time we pulled up in front of the house—possibly because it presented new, untapped opportunities for sarcasm.

  “You have such classy friends,” he said, pointing to a discarded toilet that was lying near the front porch. “Unfettered by bourgeois notions of aesthetics and respectability.”

  “Potty,” Timmy said, pointing.

  “Timmy, you and Rob stay here in the car where it’s cool,” I said as I got out. “I’m going to see if I can get in and look around. I’m leaving the keys so you can keep the air conditioning on while you’re waiting.”

  “It’s just you and me, kid,” Rob said, in a bad Bogart accent. Timmy giggled as if Rob had said something hilarious.

  I strolled up onto the cluttered front porch and knocked on the door again.

  “Jasper? Mr. Bass?”

  No answer. Back in the car, Timmy and Rob were having a tickle fight and giggling nonstop. Apart from that, everything was quiet, except for the window-unit air conditioner at one side of the house, which was still laboring away. Probably on high speed, by the sound of it. That probably meant Jasper wasn’t planning to be away too long, didn’t it? When I went on vacation, I turned the thermostat way down. Or was Jasper feckless enough to leave the air conditioning running full blast even if he’d left town for a while? Probably. Especially if it was on his uncle’s utility bill.

  I peered through both of the front windows, then began circling the house, peering into each window in turn. The other rooms—a bedroom and a small kitchen—looked much as the living room had, cluttered and rundown.

  When I got to the back door, I pulled out my lock-picking kit. No sense in making Rob a witness to my attempt at breaking and entering, and if I found anything worth reporting to the police, I could always claim that I’d found it open. After all, with Timmy along yesterday, I couldn’t easily sneak around to the back of the house to test the windows and doors there. For all I knew, there could be a door open.

  Luck was on my side. The back door had an old lock, remarkably similar to the ones I’d learned on during that long-ago summer when Dad’s fascination for Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr series led him to try learning a few burglar skills. And while Dad had been a hopelessly inept lock-picker, I’d actually gotten fairly good at it. The lock yielded to my fiddling after only a few minutes.

  I opened the door and took a deep breath before stepping in.

  The deep breath was a big mistake. I gagged, and stepped back several feet, breathing shallowly and trying to calm my stomach.

  When I was sure I wasn’t going to lose breakfast, I inched closer to the door, still breathing shallowly, and then stepped inside.

  The air was frigid—no wonder the poor air conditioner was laboring so hard. And even shallow breaths couldn’t keep out the stench of decay. I pulled the bottom of my t-shirt up so I could breathe through that.

  Maybe it wasn’t anything sinister. Maybe Jasper had run off leaving the remains of dinner on the table. Yeah, right.

  I tiptoed through the kitchen and peered into the hall.

  A body lay face down on the hall floor. It was male, and tall, with a long, unkempt brown ponytail. I’d remembered Jasper as skinnier, but then maybe the dead guy wasn’t plump. It was August, and I suspected he’d been lying there a day or so. Maybe a few days. I heard flies buzzing somewhere, and I realized that there was dried blood pooled beneath one side of the head.

  Was that the only body? What if Karen—?

  Don’t go there, I told myself. If there were other bodies in the house, let the police find them.

  I started backing out of the kitchen, reaching for my cell phone as I went.

  I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that about half of the floor looked a lot cleaner than the rest, as if someone had washed it. But they hadn’t washed it all that well. I saw a few faint swirling red stains, as if someone had mopped up a lot of blood and hadn’t done a perfect job.

  But a good enough job to keep anyone who came peering through the windows from noticing the blood. At least I hadn’t noticed it when I’d peered in before picking the lock. So maybe Jasper had been killed in the kitchen and dragged into the hall, where he couldn’t be seen from the outside. It wouldn’t keep him from being found eventually, but it would slow down discovery. Maybe enough to confuse the time of death.

  Or enough for someone to unload her toddler on a friend and skip town?

  Behind me, I heard a whining noise.

  I stepped out into the yard, and suddenly the heavy August heat felt good. Scout, the hound dog, was whimpering slightly, and creeping toward the door.

  “No, boy,” I said. I grabbed his collar before he could bolt inside, and pulled the door closed.

  “Stay here with me,” I said, as I flipped open my cell phone to call Chief Burke.

  Twenty-One

  An hour later, I was leaning against Chief Burke’s car, trying to look cool, calm, and collected. At least I’d managed to convince the chief to have one of his officers take Rob and Timmy home—with sirens to gladden both their hearts—but I wasn’t sure the chief would let me go anytime soon.

  Most of the assembled police were off behind the house. Maybe even in it, some of them, though I had a feeling whoever was in charge of the crime scene probably had less trouble than usual keeping extraneous personnel outside. Some of them were milling around near the chief, talking in low tones, though from time to time I overheard a word or two. I’d heard “gunshot wound” several times, so I deduced someone had shot Jasper. And I’d also overhead that they thought Jasper had been killed two or three days ago.

  Off in the distance, I could hear a few of the officers still checking the surrounding area. It was easy to keep track of them, not only by the rustl
ing noises they made in the fallen leaves but also by the fact that they were all exclaiming over how much poison ivy was growing all over everything.

  “Whoa!” I heard Sammy shout. “You should see this vine. Thick as your wrist!”

  “I’ve got one to beat it over here,” another officer shouted back. “Thick as your ankle!”

  “This one’s got leaves a foot long,” Sammy called. “Where’s the camera?”

  I checked to make sure my cell phone was still on. I’d talked to Michael, briefly, to tell him about finding Jasper, but he’d been dragged away by his chairman for yet another interminable meeting. He’d call when he could. I focused back on the search team and its poison ivy adventures, hoping that like Timmy and me they’d escape getting the dreaded rash.

  I was so focused I started when I heard Chief Burke’s voice at my elbow.

  “I’ve got a few more questions for you,” the chief said. That was probably a lie. I suspected he had a lot more questions for me. He didn’t look happy. Not surprising—between the break-in at Karen’s apartment and the embezzlement at the college, he was already in the middle of a crime wave, at least by Caerphilly’s standards. And now here I came adding a murder to his workload.

  “So what were you doing looking for Jasper Walker?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “Not for his own sake, at least. I just wanted to see if he knew anything about Karen’s whereabouts.”

  “We’ve been looking for Mr. Walker ourselves,” the chief said. “Without any success, I might add, until you called in. Just how did you know to look for him here?”

  “One of Karen’s friends told me that Jasper was back, and living at his uncle Hiram’s place. And that Hiram was one of the Clayville Basses.”

  “So you know Mr. Bass?”

  “No, but I got a friend to look him up at one of those online phone book sites.”

  “And it never occurred to you to tell us what you’d found?”

  “It never occurred to me that you didn’t already know where to find Jasper Walker if you wanted him,” I said. I really worked at keeping the exasperation I felt out of my voice. “All your officers are local. If I’d thought about it at all, I’d have assumed that one of them would have told you about the family connection between Jasper and the Basses.”